


Mixing Memory and Desire

by lastdream



Series: Burial of the Dead [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Banter, Civil War Fix-It, Coda, Developing Relationship, Friendship, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 14:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8331802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastdream/pseuds/lastdream
Summary: Bucky Barnes of Earth-199,999 returns from the wasteland with the holes in his heart and mind patched and finds that the rifts in his world have been patched, too. The team is a team again, and they want him to be one of them—even Tony, who has every reason to hate him. It's not perfect, though.Things might be better, but that doesn't mean they're easy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Since everyone was so interested in reading what happened to these guys after their adventure in my big bang story, here, have a coda/mini-sequel. This is (one take on) what happened on Earth-199,999 after Bucky returned there.

“Hey, Steve?” Tony says, knocking on the open doorframe. He doesn’t just go right in; he isn’t sure he’s allowed, isn’t sure he _wants_ to. Things are better now, but it doesn’t mean that they’re _good_. He’s still angry with Steve, no matter how much he understands Steve’s reasons for keeping his secrets.

“Yeah?” Steve answers. He sets aside his sketchbook and looks up, pointedly giving Tony his whole attention. Tony isn’t sure whether it’s reassuring or worrying that Steve feels just as uncomfortable with him as he feels with Steve.

“I just… I wanted to ask you a question. It’s kind of weird,” Tony prefaces. He isn’t sure how to phrase his question, and he’s been debating the problem the whole way to Steve’s room of the compound.

“Shoot,” Steve says, cocking his head. Well, no doubt Tony sounds crazy already.

“I don’t know if it’s just me, or if I’m imagining things, or if it’s normal or what, but—“ Tony begins, rambling. Steve gives him a look and raises his eyebrows, silently instructing him to _get to the point already, Stark_ , and yeah, Steve’s probably right. “Was Bucky always like this?” he asks in a rush.

“Like what?” Steve asks, sounding dumbfounded.

“Usually he seems almost scarily well adjusted, but then he comes down to the workshop, and, well… he keeps talking to me like—I don’t know, I mean, I understand flirting on autopilot better than anyone but he gets all quiet and murderous as soon as I point it out, and he’s always staring at me, and I don’t know if he’s still mad at me or if he just has resting murderface—“

“He’s not mad at you,” Steve says. He sounds very certain, and Tony is fiercely jealous of that surety. Eighty percent of the time he feels like he has no clue what he’s doing.

“He’s not?” Tony blurts, sounding ridiculously vulnerable. He gives a moment of serious consideration to cutting out his own tongue. Bucky Barnes is the _last_ person Tony should be having feelings for, and Steve Rogers is the _very last_ person he should be letting find out about those feelings. After… after everything, Tony isn’t a hundred percent sure that Steve won’t finish what he started in Siberia if Tony tries to put the moves on his brainwashed best buddy.

“He’s not,” Steve confirms. “He just has no idea how to express his emotions,” he adds with a longsuffering smile.

“So this is… normal for him?” Tony asks, “Back in the Dark Ages, I mean? Because he definitely wasn’t like this before your Wakandan disappearing act—“

Tony cuts himself off. They’re trying not to talk about That Day, also known as the worst day of Tony’s life and the one he’s spent hours trying to work through with BARF when Barnes wasn’t hogging the headset to clear his programming. Steve winces a little at the mention of how he ran off—Tony knows _Steve_ still thinks it was cowardly of him to run away from an injured friend, even if Tony isn’t mad about that anymore—and then he draws himself up, gears visibly turning in his head as he considers how to answer.

Tony goes cold. He’s gotten very, very good at recognizing Steve’s face when he’s about to tell a half-truth in the past few months.

“Don’t,” he snaps. “If you don’t want to answer, say that. But don’t you dare lie to me again.” Steve has the good grace to look thoroughly ashamed of himself, an expression that still looks foreign and _wrong_ on the face of Tony’s childhood idol.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” he says sincerely. It’s a sign of how much better they’re getting that Tony forgives him almost immediately. “It’s… it’s not my story to tell, is the truth. You’re right that Bucky’s different now than before the ice, even if he’s not quite who I grew up with. He’s told me some of that story, but if he’s gonna tell you… well, that’s up to him.”

“You’re telling me that something happened to his mind _while his brain was frozen solid_?” Tony asks, baffled. To his surprise, Steve blushes, just a little.

“I don’t know how it works, and I don’t think Buck does either, but it’s still up to him to tell you, if he wants to,” Steve says. “I can promise that he’s not upset with you, though.”

“Okay,” Tony says to himself, turning to wander back out of Steve’s room.

“Hey, Tony?” Steve says. “It was good to see you.”

He sounds very sincere, like he really means what he’s saying, and his sincerity drags a response out of Tony.

“You too, C—Steve,” he says, unable to meet Steve’s eyes.

The two of them are still on rocky ground, but moments like these, Tony thinks that maybe they’ll be okay again. Despite everything, Tony _likes_ Steve, and he thinks Steve likes him too. They’re still working on transparency and communication, but they’re getting to be friends, at least a little bit. In his sentimental moments, Tony wonders if a friendship built on actually talking about their feelings might end up stronger than one built on being colleagues thrown together in an alien invasion.

It might be too much to hope, but… it is a nice hope.

 

*

 

“Tony asked me about you today,” Steve says, and Bucky’s heart picks up speed in his chest involuntarily. “Really? _That’s_ what affects your heartbeat? Not the first hundred and fifty sit-ups?”

“Shut up, Steve,” Bucky says, sitting up again. Steve is holding his feet, which isn’t strictly necessary anymore, but they like doing it anyway, because it reminds them of when they were both much younger and much more innocent, working out because they actually wanted to get stronger, and not because neither of them could sleep at two in the morning.

“You’re not going to ask me what he said?” Steve asks, sounding vaguely disappointed.

“Nope,” Bucky says. He does a few more sit-ups without breaking his pace. All he has to do is wait Steve out; Steve clearly wants to tell him, and he doesn’t have the patience to make Bucky sweat for it. Bucky, however, does. It’s only five sit-ups later when Steve breaks and opens his mouth with a rueful grin.

“For one thing, he’s noticed that you’re different than you were before cryo,” Steve says, and Bucky shrugs one-shouldered before he lays back down to start the next sit-up. That much is obvious, and Tony would be a pretty sorry genius if he couldn’t tell that Bucky’s emotional health had taken a huge upswing between freezing and unfreezing. “So I had to tell him something happened while you were frozen, but I didn’t tell him what. The other thing is that he’s noticed the way that you look at him.”

Bucky’s muscles go limp mid-curl and he flops back to the ground with a heavy thump, driving the wind out of him. Or maybe that’s the shock. In any case, Bucky finds himself gasping for breath for a moment, because _Tony wasn’t supposed to know_. Bucky was just supposed to pine quietly and never let on that he wanted more than Tony wanted to give him in return—

“He thinks you’re angry with him.”

“He _what?”_ Bucky demands. “That’s absolutely—something my Tony woulda done,” he concedes with a heavy sigh. He lies on the ground for several seconds, motionless, pushing back the stinging behind his eyes that surged when he thought about _his_ Tony, his lovely broken blue-eyed Tony, gone back to his own universe and maybe lost forever. “What’d you tell him?” he asks roughly.

“That you’re not mad,” Steve says, like it’s obvious. “You should tell him how you feel.”

“Steve, I killed his parents,” Bucky says. “I know it’s not my fault, but he’s seen _video_ of me killing his parents. How can he even look at me and not see—that _thing_?”

“We all know Tony’s getting on in years, but his vision ain’t _that_ bad yet,” Steve says. He’s being purposely obtuse, and it makes Bucky want to hit him. “Really, Buck. Usedta be Tony looked at me and only saw the fella from the film reels Howard always held him up to. Now he sees somethin’ else, and I’m not all sure who that guy is, but I think he and Tony are gettin’ to be pretty good friends.”

“Good for you,” Bucky bites out.

“Really,” Steve insists again. “I think he likes you pretty well. You didn’t see his face when he mentioned that you flirt with him—by the way, you flirt with him? Even though you’re trying to pine in secret like a romance heroine?”

“Can’t help it,” Bucky says defensively, swatting at Steve without heat.

“Sure you can’t,” Steve says. He flops to the ground beside Bucky. “Here, you do me now,” he suggests, and then immediately blushes at his own phrasing. Bucky snickers and rolls to a crouch, shifting to pin Steve’s feet with his legs because Steve is just too enormous to handle with only one hand now.

“What d’you wanna bet that’s what all the Avengers think we do at two in the morning?” Bucky asks.

“No bet,” Steve says, starting to do his own sit-ups at a punishing pace. His breathing is still slow and even, and he talks normally. “ _I_ know they’ve got eyes in their heads. Tony’s the only one who can’t seem to see how gone you are on him.”

“Well, that’s embarrassing,” Bucky says, though he refuses to look it.

“Everybody’s so _meddling_ in this century,” Steve complains. “You’re lucky they’re not all playin’ cupid with the two of you.”

“Right,” Bucky says. “That’s just your job.”

“I ain’t—oh, hell. I guess I am,” Steve admits. “I just… I just wanna see you happy, Buck. And after you came back from whatever that place was—“

He doesn’t have to explain; Bucky remembers. He’d made himself be okay in company, because it was a private grief and he didn’t want to show it off to everybody and their mother, but alone, and with Steve, he had spent a lot of hours crying over his Tony. He knows his Tony’s address, so to speak—Universe 616—but the way he understands it, his own universe is years from being able to get there. His Tony is gone for a long while yet.

And maybe that’s why he’d latched so hard onto the smaller, brown-eyed Tony of his own universe, and maybe that’s why he’d started to fall for him, but the truth is that Bucky is pretty sure he’d fall for any Tony Stark if they spent enough time together. There are some clear differences between the two Bucky has met, but there were a lot of things the same, too. This universe’s Tony talks with a little less classical reference and a little more pop culture, but he still has more heart than a dozen people put together, and Bucky figures one of those things was more important than the other.

Enough of those big, important things are common to the two Tony Starks that Bucky had probably been doomed to fall for him from the start.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees finally. “It’d be nice to be happy.”

 

*

 

“So how much longer, do you think?” Tony asks the screen, giving it at least seventy percent of his attention, even while he keeps soldering the fragment of armor on his workbench. “I’m getting kinda sick of being Apple over here.”

“I am sure you are aware that making your technology difficult to repair gives you an advantage over _any_ enemy who gains possession of one of your suits of armor,” T’Challa says pointedly, “but I believe it will only take a few more days of negotiation to ensure that appropriation of Avenger technology is not among the punitive accountability measures open to the council. I believe the continual increase of supervillain activity is helping them to better appreciate your position.”

“You mean, it’s easier for us to do our jobs when _they_ ’re willing to compromise too? _Shocker_ ,” Tony says sarcastically, but then he softens and smiles at the screen. “I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your diplomatic skills, Pantherness. I never felt like I was getting anywhere with them, but you—“

“Rule a technologically advanced sovereign nation,” T’Challa says. He’s smiling too, pleased with the compliment even as he tries to brush it off. “It helps.”

“Yeah, I suppose it would,” Tony agrees. “Well, call me when the amendment goes through? The team’ll be glad to have something to celebrate.”

“Of course, my friend. I, too, will be pleased to keep Wakandan technology in Wakandan hands.” T’Challa gives one last little grin and then cuts the connection, going back to argue with the UN. Tony feels kind of jealous that T’Challa gets to bargain from a position of strength—and actually get things done—while Tony had been stonewalled talking to _Ross_ , who wasn’t even part of the UN in the first place, and forced to accept whatever half-measure concession Ross shoved down his throat—

Okay, so Tony’s a little bitter about how thoroughly he’d been fucked over by Ross’s power games. But mostly, he’s happy for T’Challa, and unspeakably glad that he’s been able to get things done that will help all of them.

Tony solders the last connection of the armor with a little more force than necessary, and then lets it go and watches it fly back across the room to join the other repaired pieces of armor. He gives a heavy sigh and leans back on his workbench, feeling dead tired but knowing that he won’t be able to sleep for several hours yet; if he tries before midnight, he inevitably wakes up screaming after two hours and has to come back down to the workshop anyway. He sleeps better in the Tower than in the compound, but this is where the Avengers are, this is where he’s needed, so this is where he’ll stay. He considers asking them back to his Tower every day, but it just feels selfish, wanting them in his home after the way he helped break up the team so thoroughly, so he never does.

And anyway, he tells himself, this is further out of the public eye. Never mind that Tony could black all the windows of the Tower in a heartbeat and block any and all forms of surveillance with one word to Friday. Never mind that it might seem more transparent to have the Avengers integrated into society.

It’s working like this. It is. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Everybody knows that.

Tony stands up, stretches, and knows that the only way he’s going to get a decent amount of sleep is if he really, thoroughly tires himself out first. There are a few ways to do that, but only one that works every time, and has the benefit of catharsis as well.

“Hey, Fri, can you pull out the Soldier?” Tony asks, and Friday, wonderful assistant that she is, opens the sealed compartment in the wall without comment. She had stopped trying to argue after the first time she saw empiric proof that this actually helps. Tony walks over to the wall, grabbing his heaviest sledgehammer on the way.

There’s not a lot left in the compartment. Broken and dented metal plates, shredded and stripped wires, some gears bent and others missing. It barely even looks like an arm anymore. Tony takes a deep breath and twirls his sledgehammer once before he gets back to systematically wrecking everything that’s left of the Winter Soldier’s cybernetic arm. It’s exertion, emotional as well as physical, and while it tires Tony out like nothing else, it also just feels… good. It’s very satisfying, knowing that the metal bending and breaking under his blows is the same that killed his parents.

“Somehow when you said you were gonna design a new arm, this isn’t what I pictured,” Bucky says from behind him, and Tony jumps about a mile.

“There’s a new one in the works over on the table. This is, uh, the old one,” Tony says sheepishly. Bucky had said he hated this arm, but that doesn’t mean he wanted Tony smashing it to pieces with a sledgehammer. “It helps me sleep,” he confesses.

“ _Well_ , I got a trick for goin’ to sleep, doll,” Bucky says with a leer, and then he sobers. “That looks like fun.”

So he’s not upset that Tony’s destroying his old prosthetic.

“You want a turn?”

Bucky takes the sledgehammer with a small, real smile. The first time he brings it down viciously on his old arm, he releases a bark of harsh laughter like a shout, and Tony thinks that both of them are going to sleep well, tonight.

 

*

 

Bucky is sitting alone, caught in a moment of sweeping melancholy for his lost lover, when he is startled by the approach of another Tony Stark. His heart skips a little, and he fights it down, reminding it that this is not the Tony Stark he loved and lost. It doesn’t care. His heart longs for this brown-eyed Tony as fiercely as it ever had for the one with blue eyes. Bucky looks up at him miserably, but when he sees him the sorrow gets that much easier to fight. _His_ Tony is gone, in another universe (and probably sleeping with another Bucky again, he can't decide how he feels about that), but this one is right here, giving Bucky a little half-smile like he isn’t sure he’s allowed.

“Hey, Tony,” Bucky says, welcoming Tony into his space. He wonders if Tony knows how much that gesture means, coming from someone whose sense of self has been so battered as Bucky’s.

“Hey. I’m sorry, I, uh, I couldn’t help but notice that you seem a little… down,” Tony says uncertainly. Bucky snorts at the understatement and waves for him to go on. “I was just thinking, and you can say no, but Steve mentioned once that you worked in a garage for a little while? And I was thinking that, as fun as it is to smash things, it helps me sometimes if I can just… fix something, you know? So if you wanted, I have… well, I have a lot of broken stuff in the workshop, and you’re welcome to it. Open invitation.”

Bucky stares back at Tony and tries not to let his amazement show on his face. An invitation to Tony's workshop, and not just any invitation but an _indefinite_  one at that, is so much more than it sounds like, he knows—there’s nowhere else in the world that Tony is more like himself. That room, where Tony lives and breathes and creates the future, is more Tony’s heart than the arc reactor ever was.

It feels like an unfair advantage, knowing how much this invitation means for Tony, when Tony doesn’t know he knows.

Bucky can’t make himself say no. He never can.

“That sounds really great, actually,” Bucky says with a helpless smile, and he follows Tony downstairs. Tony offers him tool sets and technology and manuals and then sets him loose on the engine of one of his cars, and Bucky pretends he doesn’t know what that means, either.

Butterfingers comes over to supplement the absent prosthetic arm Tony is still building for Bucky, and while the learning bots are new to Bucky, the expression on Tony’s face is not. Bucky pretends he doesn’t know that these bots are nothing more or less than Tony’s own children, and Tony introduced them to Bucky as a friend, as someone who is welcome in the room that is the heart of Tony Stark. It’s a lot of pretending.

And the worst of it is that it makes part of Bucky hope. Bucky’s inside track on Tony’s mind makes him hope that Tony might love him back, even while he knows that he can never be the one to make the first move, for exactly that reason. Whatever feelings he may or may not have for Bucky, his decision is still his own. Bucky won’t force his hand by bringing up a question of romantic feelings that Tony may never be ready for.

“Well, you look maudlin,” Tony says from across the lab. “Mechanics not helpful for you?”

“No, it is,” Bucky says honestly. It’s just that the sorrow for his lost love has been replaced by the sorrow for his unrequited love, which is a sharper, more immediate kind of pain, though not stronger.

“C’mere, I got something else that might help,” Tony says. “It could use some improvement, but this is my first attempt.”

Bucky walks over and sees a shining metal arm on the desk in front of Tony. Looking at it, he can’t imagine that anything about it needs to be improved, but then, Tony has always been able to see potential where no one else could. It’s beautiful. Superficially, it looks very much like the old arm, but the lines of it are sleeker, more elegant, and—very subtly—reminiscent of Tony’s armor. Bucky’s stomach flips as he looks at it, and he can’t help but think _Tony made this for me. Tony did this with his own two hands, just for me. He really does care about me_.

Helplessly, Bucky meets Tony’s eyes, and his breath stops as it always does when it meets that intensity, the same in brown eyes as in blue, that means Tony is giving Bucky his entire focus.

“Can I put it on?” Bucky breathes.

“Sure,” Tony responds, equally quiet, and he seals the arm with the metal socket at Bucky’s shoulder in silence. Bucky can _feel_ the moment the contacts line up between the two pieces of equipment and sensation races down his arm, his brain registering temperature and texture and pressure all at once, and also—

“Is that—is that _proprioception_?” Bucky says, awed. “I haven’t had that in so long. I learned to do without it, but—oh, wow, Tony. Oh my God.” Bucky closes his eyes and moves his metal fingers, bringing each one to his thumb one at a time, coming close but never actually touching the tips together, almost shaking with the joy of knowing exactly how close they are, exactly how much more it would take for the two fingertips to click against each other, to tap, to make the metal ring. He opens his eyes, and Tony is smiling back with cautious happiness.

“So you like it?” Tony asks.

“Tony, I love it.” _I love you_ , he does not say. “Thank you so much.”

Tony’s hand is still touching Bucky’s, still in contact from when he attached the arm in the first place, and the feeling of the heat and warmth of his skin makes Bucky’s heart flutter helplessly. He feels like a teenager all over again, unsure of himself because his fingers brushed with a pretty girl’s when he passed her a pencil. Tony’s probably going to be the death of him, Bucky thinks.

But oh, what a way to go.

 

*

 

“Rhodey, I think something’s wrong with me,” Tony says abruptly, looking up from the modification he’s making to Rhodey’s brace.

“Are you dying again?” Rhodey demands.

“What? No,” Tony says quickly. “I’m fine, I just… It’s in my head. Or, uh, my heart, rather. I just can’t stop feeling—“

“Ohh,” Rhodey says, relaxing again. “This is about Barnes. Don’t you dare scare me like that again, Mister Stank. I pronounce your name for the press conferences, you know.”

“How did you know about—“

“You mean, how _doesn’t_ the whole planet know? You’re mooning, Tones, and I think everybody but him can see it.”

“Well, _that’s_ reassuring,” Tony says, tightening a screw maybe a touch harder than necessary. “I just—I shouldn’t like him, should I? You know what he did. I know it wasn’t his fault, but still, that’s… that’s gotta be messed up, wanting to kiss the guy who—you know. I mean, who _does_ that?”

“None of this is exactly normal, Tony,” Rhodey says, more softly. He puts a hand on Tony’s shoulder and stays silent until Tony gives in and looks up at him, slotting the cover for the braces’ inner workings back into place. Tony isn’t sure what to call the expression on Rhodey’s face, but it’s gentle, reassuring, and it makes something tight in Tony’s chest go loose again. He really, honestly doesn’t know whether he’d survive losing his best friend; he understands only too well, now, why Cap didn’t.

“I look at him, and all I can think is that I want him with me so bad, any way I can get him,” Tony says quietly. “And then I remember their faces when they died and I think that they must be so disappointed.”

“I don’t think that at all,” Rhodey counters. “I only met Maria a couple times, but look: Barnes makes sure you eat, makes sure you sleep, makes sure you’re using adequate lab safety precautions, shuts off the TV when he thinks it’ll be bad for your emotional health, and has expressed to multiple reporters that he will fight all comers for your honor. He’s doing, like, eighty percent of her job, Tones.”

“Yes, thank you, what I really needed was a comparison between the guy I want to bang and my _mother_.”

“My point is that he’s good for you,” Rhodey says stubbornly, though Tony thinks he can detect a trace of embarrassment on his face. “He likes looking after you, and you—amazingly—actually let him do it. I think Maria’d approve. And I _know_ she’d want you to be happy.”

“I’m not sure I know how to be, anymore,” Tony confesses. It’s a fear that’s been weighing on his mind since Pepper left him, the gnawing suspicion that the people he cares about don’t care about him quite the same way, that they’re _all_ just waiting for an excuse to leave. It makes it hard to relax, hard to trust that his friends, even Rhodey, are with him because they want to be there. Rhodey’s eyes soften as he levers himself to standing, and then takes Tony’s hand to pull him up too.

“I’m not sure he knows either,” Rhodey says, indicating the workshop door where—oh God—Bucky is in fact standing, waiting to be let in so as not to interrupt Rhodey's time with Tony. “But I think you’ll figure something out.”

Rhodey claps Tony on the shoulder and heads out, walking steadily enough to inspire a flutter of pride and waving Bucky in as he goes. Tony swallows hard around the growing anxiety in his throat, but he finds that there’s determination there, too. He’s going to try this, he thinks, and then again, fainter, vaguely terrified: _he’s going to try this_.

But Tony hasn’t asked anyone out properly in more than a decade, hasn’t kissed anyone but Pepper in eight years. How is he supposed to do this?

Breathe. Keep breathing.

Breathing is definitely a good first step.

God, Bucky’s handsome today. His hair is half-up and half hanging in his face and his jaw is just shadowy enough to promise the best kind of rawness and his _shoulders_ , that is a really, really good shirt for those shoulders, and he has two deliciously bare forearms and one of them is _Tony’s own work_ , shining and on display like Bucky’s proud of it—

Salivating is not among the steps, Tony berates himself. Get yourself under control, Stark.

“Uh, hi,” Tony says, the height of eloquence. “So what brings you down here, huh?”

Tony Stark, everyone. Playboy extraordinaire.

“Wanted to see you,” Bucky answers, and Tony has to fight a flush.

“Is something wrong?” he asks. “Is your arm—“

“It’s perfect, Tony. I just wanted to—well, you said I could be here,” Bucky finishes, almost defensive. Like he’s not sure of his welcome.

“Yeah, of course you can,” Tony assures him. Bucky starts to move like he’s going to walk past Tony, maybe to go back to work on the engine he’d opened up last time he was down here, and Tony knows he has to do it now. He has to do it before this moment ends, or he’ll lose his nerve all over again. Tony takes a deep breath and stuffs his hands into his pockets so that he doesn’t fidget. “Bucky,” he blurts, and the man stops in his tracks, turning back to look Tony in the eye like he’s assessing him, like he thinks something might be wrong.

“Yeah?” Bucky says after another silence. Tony’s mouth opens and closes, but Bucky doesn’t start to look impatient, just mildly confused.

“Would you, uh. Sometime. Would you like to get dinner? With me, I mean.” God, that was awful. It barely even sounds like he’s asking Bucky out, and it definitely doesn’t sound romantic. What was Tony thinking, clearly he’s not ready to start a relationship, especially not with _Bucky_ —

“You mean, like a date?” Bucky says, his eyes very bright. He’s always hard to read, but Tony thinks maybe, just maybe, that expression might be _hope_ , and the possibility gives him the strength to get the words out through his uncooperative throat.

“Exactly like a date,” Tony says, and a smile bursts over Bucky’s face so quickly that he must’ve been holding it back.

“That’d be great,” Bucky says, still smiling. Tony doesn’t think he’s ever seen a smile this wide last this long on Bucky’s face before. He couldn’t look away if he wanted to. Then Bucky takes a step forward, coming in very close to Tony’s personal space, and his warm right hand comes tentatively up to Tony’s cheek while the left finds its way familiarly to Tony’s waist. As though Bucky’s hands already know that they belong there, settled on his body. Tony’s heart is pounding in his chest and his eyes feel unfocused as he tilts his head to look up at Bucky. “Would it be alright if I kissed you?” Bucky whispers, his breath warm where it washes over Tony’s face.

“Yeah,” Tony says, and he barely has a moment to process before Bucky is surging forward, licking into Tony’s mouth like he’s starved for it. His lips and tongue feel so _good_ against Tony’s that it’s all he can do to keep breathing for a few moments. When he finally gathers the wherewithal to kiss back, he almost freezes again out of sheer shock and amazement.

Because Bucky surrenders _immediately_ , no fight at all, giving himself over to Tony in a heartbeat like he’s been longing and waiting for a chance to do it. Tony redoubles his efforts and revels in Bucky’s responsiveness, the way he moans and gasps for every little touch like it’s exactly what he needs, like he’ll never get enough. Bucky responds enthusiastically to _everything_ , and it makes Tony feel a thousand feet tall, like he can do no wrong. He feels _wanted_.

It’s everything he could have dreamed, and more besides.

 

*

 

Bucky loves being with Tony. It’d be so easy to say that it’s perfect, that it’s just the same as being with his blue-eyed Tony from the wasteland, but that wouldn’t be doing it justice at all. Because it _is_ perfect, but not because it’s the same.

Tony is different, more direct about saying what he means and more cagey about his own feelings—angry, sometimes, where the other Tony had only had sadness left. Bucky is different, too, emotionally even-keeled except for the new sorrow. The world itself is different in the most obvious way: it’s a real city full of real people doing real things, and when monsters show up a whole team flies out to meet them.

And some of that’s better, and some of it’s worse, but the big things—the really important things—are still there. Love. Trust. A commitment to helping each other get better. Bucky takes this last very seriously, because from what he’s seen, not a lot of people have, in the past. History tells him that this Tony has spent a long time suffering in silence because no one had cared enough to stick around, to tell him that it’s okay for him to be hurting and for him to share that pain with someone else, to get help. And maybe that’s not completely fair to Tony’s friends, who are by all accounts amazing, but still—Bucky takes this very seriously. Aside from a few comments about mother hens, Tony seems to like being taken care of too much to really complain.

And it’s perfect. It is.

The only problem is something Bucky has no idea how to address, so he’s been putting it off, which might be a bad idea, but it’s working so far, so he keeps doing it.

It’s late afternoon when Bucky heads down to the workshop, sandwich in hand, ready to coax Tony out of his work for a few bites of food and maybe a kiss or two. Tony still gets as absorbed in his work as ever, but now as soon as he hears the workshop door open he instinctively frees up a hand and starts groping over the surface of the table for the food his hindbrain has learned he’ll find there. It’s progress, and Bucky’ll take it.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Bucky says, pressing himself against Tony’s back so he won’t be in the way as Tony begins to eat. He wraps both arms around Tony, because he _can_ , and because Tony can’t quite hide how much he likes feeling his own work on Bucky.

“Hhgh,” Tony replies through a mouthful of sandwich. He swallows quickly. “Hi.”

“Whatcha workin’ on?” Bucky asks him. Tony takes two more bites, polishing off the sandwich, and makes sure to swallow before he starts answering.

“Wasp wanted me to consult, to see if there’s anything I can do to track someone in the microverse. The tricky part is that things aren’t just smaller in the microverse, they’re weirder too,” Tony explains, his tone making it clear just what he thinks of having to use _weird_ as a scientific term. “I got some data from Ant-Man that’ll help me predict the temporal fluctuations, but I don’t have anything solid enough to give to Wasp, yet.”

“Wasp?” Bucky asks before he can stop himself. “You mean Jan Van Dyne?”

“I mean Hope Van Dyne, who’s looking in the microverse for her mother Jan, who was the _original_ Wasp, who you shouldn’t know anything about,” Tony says slowly. “She’s both before and after your time, and I happen to know that you were frozen on the other side of the globe while she was active.”

Oops. It was only a matter of time before a slip-up, Bucky tells himself, but he can’t help bracing himself as though for a blow. He doesn’t know what Tony’s going to do.

“I—“ he says thickly. The rest of that sentence, whatever it might’ve been, gets stuck in his throat.

“You wanna tell me how you know—“ Tony stops abruptly. “Bucky, you’re _shaking_.”

Oh. That’s true. He can’t help it; there’s too much emotion in his system. Not just anxiety over Tony, though that’s part of it—Bucky had learned a lot about the Jan Van Dyne of Earth-616 from his blue-eyed Tony. She’d been one of Tony’s best friends, one of the strongest and best superheroes he’d ever known, and to think that she’s dead or gone in _both_ of their universes—

“I’m okay,” Bucky lies. He’s not sure it counts as a lie, because Tony sees through it in about point two seconds.

“Bucky, what aren’t you telling me?” Tony asks carefully, turning in Bucky’s arms until he’s looking up at Bucky, eyes narrowed as he scrutinizes him carefully. Bucky can see it behind his eyes when Tony puts something together, discards it as ridiculous, and picks it back up again because, well, ridiculous doesn’t rule out anything, the way their lives go. “Is this related to the thing Steve wouldn’t tell me?”

Bucky’s first thought, every time secrets come up, will probably always be of Siberia, but then he remembers what Steve had told him, that Tony had realized that something must have changed for Bucky during cryo, and Steve had told him that it was Bucky’s story to tell.

Looks like that telling is going to be now.

“Yes,” he admits.

“Christ,” Tony breathes. “I thought—I don’t know. Maybe your brain had some kind of super self-repair that still works while you’re frozen, I don’t know what I thought. This is gonna be crazier than that, isn’t it.” It’s not a question.

“Yes,” Bucky says again. “It’s a whole lot crazier than that. I was conscious.”

“Oh God—“

“I was conscious, but I wasn’t present. My mind went… somewhere else.”

“Like a hallucination?” Tony asks. The gears are still visibly turning in his mind.

“Like the space between universes,” Bucky says. He watches Tony mouth _universes_ to himself, lingering over the plural. “It might be easier just to show you.”

It’s almost a physical pain, retracting his arms from where they’re still looped around Tony’s waist—he doesn’t know when he’ll get to hold Tony again, and he wants to hold on as long as he can. He wants to hold on the way he couldn’t, with his blue-eyed Tony. But he can’t, and he doesn’t.

Bucky heads over to another table of the workshop and scoops up the BARF headset. He gives a helpless, rueful smile when he thinks of the way Tony still—probably deliberately—hasn’t changed the name. It _is_ kind of funny, watching investors trip over a dozen syllables to avoid saying the word _barf_ in a meeting.

“Friday, can you hook this up to the holoprojectors?” Bucky asks the ceiling, putting the headset on with his left hand because his right is still trembling. He’s not scared, exactly, but he feels like there’s a canyon opening up in the ground in front of him, and he has no idea whether Tony’s going to try to jump it with him or stay safely put on the other side. He remembers how _he_ reacted when his blue-eyed Tony told him about James, but similar as they are, he doesn’t think it’s enough to predict this brown-eyed Tony’s response.

“Ready to go, Boss,” Friday says.

Bucky takes a deep breath and focuses on his memories of the wasteland, watches the bleak landscape appear before him, superimposed over the workshop.

“Doesn’t exactly look like a nice vacation spot,” Tony says.

“It was alright,” Bucky replies.

That’s the last they talk for a long while. Bucky is too busy focusing on his memories; Tony, he thinks, goes quiet because he’s so caught up in the hologram, his mind working a thousand miles an hour trying to make sense out of everything. Bucky hears him gasp when he sees the blue-eyed Tony Stark for the first time, and he can’t help but cry silently when he remembers the way his love had looked, curled and helpless and hopeless, at the mercy of his own mind.

It goes on and on, and Bucky remembers everything as faithfully as he can. Some instinct urges him to tone down the times he and Tony had had sex, or omit them altogether, but Bucky knows if he doesn’t tell everything now he might never be able to make himself do it. So he tells the whole story.

Eventually, it’s over. Bucky’s crying again. Reliving his last minutes with his blue-eyed love before they’d been ripped apart is—

It’s a lot. It hurts almost more than he can bear.

“So, that happened,” Tony says quietly, watching him with an odd kind of caution on his face. “Am I just his replacement, then? Or did you think—“

Tony is cut off by the sob that escapes Bucky, his already overworked emotions unable to handle that question from Tony. He tears the headset off and covers his face with his hands, pressing the metal one tight over his mouth and trying to get himself under control.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says quietly, and Bucky nods without moving his hands. “You love him,” he states.

“Yeah. I do.” Bucky says. He can feel pressure marks from the metal hand as he scrubs the tears from his cheeks. “You’re not the same person,” he says. “I mean, you are, but in so many ways… Tony, I love _you_. You have a lot in common with him, but you have to believe that I—“

“You… love me?” Tony squeaks. Bucky looks up at him quickly.

“I—yes. Yeah, Tony.”

Tony looks like he doesn’t know quite what to do with this information. He breathes deeply. Bucky can’t imagine what he must be thinking, behind the near-perfect mask of neutrality that he pulls up across his face.

“I—I don’t,” Tony says, and then more words tumble out in a rush. “I’m not saying I can’t, it’s just—this is so new, and I just—“

“Tony,” Bucky says, stopping him. Half a smile tugs at the corner of his lips as he remembers saying this, once before. He understands, really and truly. “It’s not a question that needs an answer. It’s just… a fact.”

“Maybe someday,” Tony goes on stubbornly. Then his face softens, looks… hopeful. “Maybe someday,” he says again, like an offer.

Bucky looks back at him steadily, and he’s sure he still looks raw, eyes red-rimmed and tearstained, but Tony’s cautious, hopeful expression is infecting him, too. He tries on a small smile, and Tony returns it. After a moment, he steps back into Bucky’s arms and they hold each other tightly.

Tony tucks his head under Bucky’s chin sweetly. It’s comforting, but he knows it’s meant to make sure that Bucky knows who he’s with, even when he can’t see Tony’s eyes. As if Bucky could ever confuse the two of them.

So Bucky settles his metal hand between Tony’s shoulder blades, reminding him in return that there were some things he never had with the Tony of the wasteland. Some things are just for the two of them.

They hold each other for a long time, composing themselves and pressing heat into each other’s bodies. It feels… nice. It’s real.

“Tell me, Bucky,” Tony begins after awhile. He sounds like he’s restraining humor, which is definitely a good sign. Bucky hums acknowledgement, wondering what’s got Tony into such a good mood all of a sudden. He can feel Tony smile into his neck, teeth and all. “Are you that kinky in real life, too?”


End file.
